Teach me to care and not to care.
“The days are surely coming when the word ‘classical’ will be as ambiguous as the word ‘Republican,’ a term which now encompasses everyone from Never Trumpers like Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse to the QAnon Shaman who stormed the Capitol.”
-from “The Downside of Classical Christian Education’s Rising Popularity,” which I will deliver next week at the CiRCE National Conference in Charleston.
The modern man uses the term “witch hunt” as a euphemism for injustice and hysteria because he thinks witches an absurd superstition. The modern man does not believe any “hunt” could ever turn up a witch.
For all their faults, the people of Salem gave trials to those accused of witchcraft. Those accused of the modern equivalent of witchcraft receive no such luxury.
Very few period pieces set in the 1980s are all that convincing because the average home in 1985 was largely stocked with goods and styles from the 1970s and late 1960s, although contemporary filmmakers typically stuff a “1985 home” with goods and styles that were fashionable in the year 1985.
I probably get more comments on “the Donut Plant” episode of Proverbial than any other.
This week, “Marvin” is a sort of sequel.
Tomorrow, we are waking at five to get on the road early. Driving from the Lemoore Naval Air Station through the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas, and hopefully making it to the Grand Canyon by early evening.
I made a playlist for the occasion. As usual, this one is marked collaborative, so feel free to add to it.
Bob Harris: “You want more mysterious?”
Tom: We’ve made remarkable cultural progress over the last fifty years.
Harry: Really? What about rising suicide rates? And do you know how many Americans are on antidepressants?
Tom: We’ve probably always been this depressed. It just wasn’t reported or diagnosed before.
Every time.
“My Girls” is the latest episode of Proverbial. It is devoted to, “Birds of a feather flock together,” a saying that could keep your next cocktail party from being a dud.
“Monasteries were both more popular and more productive when they were harder to get into. The gatekeepers of classical schools should remind themselves of this fact every day before beginning their work.”
-from “The Downside of Classical Christian Education’s Rising Popularity,” one of two forthcoming talks at the CiRCE 2021 National Conference
Sign up for virtual admittance to the conference and attend my lectures online
“Love your neighbor as yourself” is an ethic which assumes love is a teacher. A man’s intuitive care for himself must always be pushed outward, stretched farther. Our neighbors are not on the other side of the world, but physically close to us. Our neighbors are just beyond our own bodies. Love is a dilation of being, the reception of the Infinite Himself. When God’s love fills a man it “runs over” and those near that man are blessed by the gratuitous bounty which overflows. The man who loves God cannot help loving his neighbors.”
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.